Linux on a 500mhz processor

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I'm planing on buying the Kohjinsha SA1F00B. So it's gonna be a 500mhz processor prolly with 1gig of ram. I'm thinking about running Fedora Core on it. I know I'm gonna need to run a small Windows Manager. XFCE being my Windows Manager of choice. I was just wonder what everyones opinion on this was. I know a 500mhz processor is kinda small for the pricetag. But I need a small and portable machine with a keyboard and such. I think 500mhz would be perfect for wardriving/websurfing/email etc. So. What should I put on it. And I would also like some opinions on the machine aswell.

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Debian or Slackware would be a good choice as far as distro. My grandmother is currently running Slackware 11 with XFCE on a 550 MHz PIII with 128 MB RAM. It's not a fireball, but it's fine for Internet/e-mail/general stuff.

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I'm pretty sure the Geode is slower as well. I seem to remember messing with a Geode-powered internet applicance that absolutely crawled.

I would go even more minimal. You don't need to save on RAM really (1 gig is plenty), but you do need to save on cycles at every opportunity. IceWM is a good choice, as is fluxbox. WM doesn't really matter when it comes right down to it, what matters is your programs. Don't use thunderbird when sylpheed will do. Don't use Firefox to view some HTML docs, use something more lightweight. In fact, Opera is much easier on the cycles, go with that Don't even run X unless you need to, GUIs chew up cycles.

I wouldn't go with Fedora either. It's really bloated, you don't have the luxury of bloat. Debian or Slackware would be a better choice.

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Well it's mostly gonna be used for SSH and such. I don't need much power. The price is alittle high for 500mhz but it has a touch-screen will bluetooth to my phone for EDGE websurfing etc. Price isn't a big deal. I want a UMPC and this seems to be the cheapest and most full featured. I like the idea of the touchscreen and what not. I'm pondering if the machine will really need 1gig of ram. I'm not sure if it's aftermarket upgradeable but I think I'm just gonna go with the 1gig and forget about it Ya I figure XFCE would be best.. I was thinking Slackware aswell. Who knows what I will do. But if anyone knows UMPC with = features let me know! price wise I would hope to keep it about the same as that.

--Edit--

Also with the Geode processor anyone know where I could find benchmarks or reviews on it?

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I just thought of something, throw the OLPC distro on there for kicks.

I know enough about Linux. I hate ubuntu distro's honestly. I feel like I'm being held back alot of the time. Another worry I do have though is how well the hardware will be detected in Linux. It's my one little worry. It's made for XP so I would asume most of it will run linux fine. I'm just now sure. I don't know if I can be sure till I get it. Though some people on engadget mentioned running linux on it. From what I read about the processor in the last few minutes it seems to be one of the better running Geode processors.

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I have some NX-1 Geode processor based boards. They're 300 MHz processors that don't even require a heatsink. Linux with a 2.6.16 kernel reports around 600 BogoMIPS. I think AMD has largely improved the Geode cores though (the NS-1 was made by National Semiconductor, and was recognized as a Cyrix Media-GX -- Cyrix was notably not great in the processor department).

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Stop discouraging him from fedora, it will run fine on that box. It is however going to be a pain to build patched drivers for injection, assuming you want to, on that box. But before I got my thinkpad I had an old dell latitude 500 mhz pentium 3 with 256 megs of ram and it was good enough to do all my wireless hacking for over a year. xfce will run fine on it and fedora will run fine assuming you spend the time to set it up correctly and not just have everything enabled.

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you may want to take a look @ Vector & Zenwalk Linux...both Slackware based ..Zenwalk comes with XFCE....& Vector STD comes with XFCE, Fluxbox, & IceWM...I run Zenwalk on a 266mhz PII laptop with almost no issues....Vector is just as good

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Thanks for all the input guys. I'm prolly still gonna be shopping around for a few weeks before I take the plung. If anyone can think of anything else that would do awesome as a lower power low heat good notebook UMPC Sub-Notebook. for Wireless hacking etc. Let me know I think in the end I might beable to do alot better then this little machine. But who knows.

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How much are you willing to spend on a notebook. You can pick up some really nice used thinkpads for fairly inexpensive. I got my T40 off ebay refurb over a year ago and have never been happier. If you can afford a few hundred check out like the T40 or T30. You'll find some good packages on ebay and thinkpads are amazing notebooks.

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Ya that's what Affinity keeps telling me. He is a RL friend of mine. I'm lookin to spend around $1,400 The thing is I need something that crazy portable amazing battery life and something that's not gonna replace my desktop. I have a habit of using w/e is easyer. And I ended up doing that with my last notebook and used the hell out of that thing. I like the idea of the thinkpad. But I have never really been a huge fan of the thinkpads. I know alot of people are. I want bluetooth for internet over my phone etc. So I'm not totally sure. Still kinda confused as to what I need/want/get.

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For 1400 you can pick up a brand new T60 from lenovo. Trust me, I use my thinkpad every day and take it out hacking all the time, these things will last you years as long as you take care of them. They are strong, durable, and amazing machines.

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Stay away from the internal atheros wifi card if it's pre-n if you are planning to run linux on it. Tioscti has that one and says that it doesn't work with madwifi-ng. I know they've added some support into the subversion build but I don't know how stable it is or if it even really works. Go for the intel card and pick up a pcmcia atheros card for all your injection needs.

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I have an IBM ThinkPad T40 as well -- got it off eBay for $500 last summer. It's an excellent machine. The screen size is 14". With a standard 6-cell battery I get about 5-6 hours battery life...12 hours with the extended 9 cell. There's also a battery option that plugs in to the UltraBay slot (where the removable CD/DVD drive goes) that gives even more power. I've also got a 12 V car adapter, which I picked up for under $20. ThinkPads are usually pretty solid machines, and they usually have very Linux-compatible hardware. The only downside to it, is that IBM thought it would be good to try to force people to use only IBM-approved wireless cards in their laptops -- fortunately, there's a free BIOS patch (comes on a Linux live CD, so there's very little to screw up) that allows you to use any card in the Mini PCI slot (any PCMCIA card will work, naturally).

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I have decided on a Thinkpad. I saw some one overstock for 400$ I think thouse are pry my best deal. I can upgrade the ram later on if need be. So it should be alll gooooddd thanks for all the input guys xD